Oh look, another chapter! I know there wasn't much of a gap between this one and the last one, but Mickey was chomping at the bit to get this one written and so she kept me up to some ungodly hour of the morning in order to finish it. I hope it meets expectations! Drop me a review when you finish reading to let me know what you think!

Chapter Nine

For reasons unknown to her, Church had eventually decided that leaving her to sit in the chair was no longer an acceptable option. A few hours after their previous conversation Mikayla found herself being roughly handled by a couple of his men as they removed the ropes that bound her and forced her to her feet. A short debate between them had followed as they did their best to prevent her from evading their grasp, but the small amounts of food and water that she had been allowed since her capture had left her struggling to support her own weight. Of course, that didn't mean that she didn't get one good smack in before they subdued her again. If she hadn't broken that guy's nose, she'd be surprised.

Down a short tunnel they had gone and into a darkness that Mikayla was beginning to grow accustomed to before she could hear a heavy metal door pulled aside and a different sort of light filtered into her vision. They threw her to the floor without apology and quickly backed away lest they be attacked again, slamming the door with such force that her ears began to ring from the sound. A groan fluttered past her lips as she tried to push herself into a sitting position. Already she could feel the bruises forming on her arms from where they had held her, her wrists stinging bitterly to rejoice in the freedom they now had from the rough contact of the rope. And as her eyes began to adjust to the new light in the room, Mickey realized that despite the slight decline she had felt when they were moving her, she was still above ground somewhere.

There was a window in this room as well, through which she could see the beams of moonlight slip through the heavy metal bars that lined the frame and spread across the floor. It was high enough to be out of reach, but if the room sat itself in the right manner she might still be able to escape. Then again…Church had proven himself to be a resourceful person thus far in his pursuit of revenge, and so he wouldn't have been foolish enough to make the mistake of leaving her unbound and free if he believed there was a good chance of her escaping. No, there would be something or someone on the other side of the door. The window however…

She had to try.

But first came the task of getting herself to her feet, and right now it was proving to be a far more difficult task than usual. Very slowly she began to drag her body toward the wall, fingernails digging into the cold stones beneath her to find every edge that she could. It was a slow process, painfully so, but her legs were not yet cooperating with her and so Mikayla was forced to continue on as she was. Inch by inch she made her way across the floor of her newest prison cell until she could press her hands flush against the call, shuffling her body sideways to find the corner of the room. Using two walls would be easier, she reasoned. She would be able to use the resistance that was created in her hands by pushing against each wall until she was on her feet again and better able to judge the distance between herself and the window. She took a moment to close her eyes, inhaling deeply to try and center her mind for the task at hand. Damn, this was going to hurt.

Gritting her teeth in anticipation against the pain that was to come, Mickey shot both hands out to the walls on either side of her body and instantly felt the tension spread from her fingertips to her shoulders and all the way down to her toes. Her legs were struggling to shift, but she managed to keep them underneath her as they slowly absorbed the weight that was being placed upon them. Her back fell against the wall the instant she was high enough to consider moving her hands, her chest rising and falling in a steady pant from the effort. Damn, it should not have been that hard, she thought to herself. But how long had she been a hostage now? A few days at least, too many for her to remember.

Dark eyes immediately glanced up at the window as she tried to steady her breathing, looking to judge just how far she was going to have to try to jump or climb if she was to reach the bars at all. She was a fairly tall woman at about five feet and ten inches, but the window was significantly higher than that, and she doubted that even a professional gymnast could jump that high without some kind of help. Well shit, that wasn't going to help her.

The sound of the shift metal forced her head to turn back toward the door, watching as the artificial light from the end of the corridor slowly began to spill into her prison cell. She could hear voices now, men who laughed and taunted at the sounds of struggle that also filtered into the room.

"Hey sweetheart."

"Church."

There were no warmth in the way that she said his name. Her tone was dark and filled with warning, hoping that perhaps that might be enough to keep him from coming any closer to where she stood. She could barely make out his bald figure in the doorway as he leaned against the framework, for they hadn't opened it wide enough to present her with any opportunity for freedom.

"I was afraid that you might start getting a little lonely in here, so I brought you a friend."

They pulled the door aside just long enough for another body to be thrown in to join her, a larger form that groaned at the harsh impact of the cold stone floor. From where he stood on the other side, she could feel the made grin that was likely spread across Church's smug face.

"Coward," she hissed, forcing her body to take those few steps forward.

But she wasn't fast enough to make it toward him before the door was slammed shut once more, and the darkness surrounded her once again. She crossed the distance of the room with much better speed than she had anticipated but quickly found exactly what she had dreaded. The door was indeed made of cold steel, which would mean that escaping through there would require help from the outside. So instead of focusing on the barrier in her way, the young woman turned instead to the coughing mass who now occupied the floor space at her feet. She didn't need to guess at who it was that had been so unceremoniously thrown in there with her. There was only one person who was stupid enough to get himself into this mess.

"Mickey?"

The young woman did her best not to flinch at the sound of her old nickname coming from his lips, but it was harder to do that she might have liked. She looked down at him as he struggled to regain his senses, blinking quickly to either clear up his vision or try to find his center of balance once again. Even if he had surrendered to Church willingly as ordered she knew that the maniac wasn't just going to take him hostage without giving him some form of a beating. After all, revenge was the only thing Church seemed to have on his mind.

"I told you not to come after me," she told him, feeling a little of her anger begin to bubble in the pit of her stomach. "Why didn't you listen to me?"

Barney groaned, pressing himself backward until his back came into contact with the wall. "When the hell did you say that?"

Mikayla rolled her eyes, slowly lowering herself to the floor so that she could better look at her new cell mate. "In that video he used to bait you here, remember? I said that you wouldn't be stupid enough to come after me because you didn't care."

"That's not tr-"

"It doesn't matter," she said dismissively.

"But it does-"

"Just drop it, Barney."

He leaned his head back against the wall and lifted a hand to touch his temple, hissing in pain as he made contact. Even in the dim lighting that they had she could see that he was bleeding rather well, both from his hairline and from the one corner of his lip. One of his eyes was already beginning to swell up from what was likely a punch to the face, and she was fairly certain that he wasn't wearing any sort of body armour at all. How long had he been here? Regardless of how long, it certainly looked like Church had done a number on him already.

Without hesitation her fingers reached down to the edge of her shirt and pulled the material up over her head, leaving only the camisole that she had worn underneath it to cover her upper body. She worked to rip the material into a few pieces, discarding some of them beside her and wadding up another piece in her hands before she crept a little closer to Barney and took his face gently in her hands. As gently as she could, she began to dab the soft fabric of the shirt against the corner of his lip to erase the trail of blood that had slowly trickled from the corner of his mouth and down his chin. It didn't look too bad, she thought to herself. It was the injury to his head that worried her a little more.

Barney turned his head a little, surveying her face with the less swollen of his eyes. "Did he hurt you?" he asked quietly.

But the young woman just shook her head. "No," she murmured. "Kept me on a short food and water leash, but he didn't hurt me."

"What's this?"

His one hand had come to rest lightly on her wrist as he tried to erase the blood from his face, and though his fingers were considerably rougher than her own she could feel the softness in his touch as he brushed over the sensitive skin. "Rope burn," Mickey explained. "He kept me tied to a chair for a while – thought maybe he'd be able to play mind games with me or something."

Barney didn't immediately respond, but she could feel the tension grow in his body as she spoke. She winced a little as his fingers momentarily tightened around her wrist, but he quickly caught himself and let go before any further harm could be done. In the silence that now fell between them Mikayla took the opportunity to survey the older man once more, ignoring the cool brush of air that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end. His lip would be swollen for a little while, as would his eye. It was only the blood that fell from his head that she needed to look at now, and since head injuries often looked worse than they were due to the thin skin that was available for protection she hoped that it was significantly better than it appeared.

Shifting her sitting position on the floor Mickey threw the soiled piece of fabric aside and picked up another, proceeding to lightly skim her fingers through his hair to try and better see the damage that had been done. The skin had definitely been broken by something, she thought as she gently touched the piece of material to his head. And it looked like he was hit with something a little stronger than just a fist as well based on how long and deep the gash in his head was.

Damn, Barney had done a number on himself this time.

Mikayla sighed softly. "What the hell are you even doing here, Barney?"

The old man shifted himself, turning a little to blink up at her. "I came to get you."

"He's not going to let me go," the girl reminded him a little bitterly. "And he's definitely not letting you go either. I don't know what you did but you really pissed him off."

"He used to work for the CIA," coughed Barney, a grimace spreading across his face when she pressed the cloth to his head again. "Hired us to run a couple of missions, take down some bad guys. The same stuff I've always been doing."

Mickey didn't comment. She was well aware of the "stuff" he had been doing since long before she had been born, and that had been the cause of the rift between them. In the eyes of a little girl her father had always loved his job more than he had ever loved her. So she had thought that maybe, just maybe…

She shook her head, pushing those thoughts aside. "Did he hit you anywhere else?"

His hand moved slowly in response to her question, coming to rest on his lap. On instinct her one hand dropped away from his head and immediately went to touch his abdomen, adding small amounts of pressure as they danced around to feel for any signs of broken bones. Barney groaned a little at the contact but otherwise didn't seem to be too discomforted. He'd likely have bruises, but it didn't appear that anything had been broken.

A soft sigh of relief fell from her lips as slowly continued to double check her assessment. Everything appeared to be fine, she thought. She could feel some of his bones a little better than perhaps was healthy, but it didn't seem that Church had broken him open yet. As she got to his upper ribs however, Mikayla could feel Barney's heart beating strongly in his chest and paused for a moment to let the steady beat settle into her fingertips. It was something she had done quite a bit as a child when he had come to see her, just sit in his lap or lay across his chest with her hand pressed to his heart. It had been her way of assuring herself that he was still alive, that his heart was still going strong despite the numerous dangers he insisted on placing himself in. Her mother had never hidden the truth from her while she was growing up, and so Mikayla had endured nightmares for a long while about the ways in which her father could be suffering at the hands of bad men.

Mikayla became so caught up in the memory that she almost forgot of where she currently was. Her eyes grew wide and her breathing began to pick up a little as she relived those moments in her mind, remembering the fear she had felt when she saw his back retreating out the door every time, scared that perhaps that might have been the last time she saw him alive. Even in his slightly disoriented state Barney noticed the change in her, and the hand that had been sitting in his lap was quickly brought up to cover her smaller hand and press her palm more firmly against his chest.

"It's okay, Mick," he told her as gently as he could in his gruff tone. "It's okay."

"No," she told him quickly, pulling her hand away as if his touch burned her skin. "No, it's not okay. You have no idea what I went through as a kid because of what you do. This is exactly the kind of thing I was worried about."

Before she could be stopped Mikayla pushed herself unsteadily to her feet and moved herself away from Barney's reach, using the wall to balance the weight of her body as it struggled to so what she was asking of it. Her chest was heaving now, her emotions fighting against her to be released for the first time since she had struggled to deal with her mother's passing all on her own. She'd kept them under control while she trained, that had been easy enough to do when her anger had pushed all of the others aside in order to take the top spot. But now that she was confronted with the very thing that had stolen so much sleep from her in her youth, Mikayla was having a harder time dealing with it then she should have.

"Mickey," he called to her gently, struggling to shift his body against the wall. "Mickey talk to me."

The brunette paused for a moment, heavily considering whether or not to tell him the truth. She didn't owe him anything, the voice in the back of her head reminded her. He hadn't been there. He didn't care.

"You and the guys used to come by and visit every so often, maybe two or three times a year," the young woman began. "And for a while that was okay because at least I got to see you. But then they'd come by to see Mom and I, and you wouldn't be with them. You were busy but you sent your love, they used to tell me. And as soon as I was old enough to ask Mom what it was that you did that kept you away for so long I was always scared – scared that every time you left to go back to 'work' I'd never see you again."

Wisely, Barney just sat there and listened without interruption.

"You promised me that you'd always be there if I needed you. But you weren't. Mom got sick and I wrote to you because she asked me to, but you never showed up. You never came back."

"You didn't want me back."

"I was sixteen years old," she told him angrily, turning to look down upon his slumped frame with her dark brown orbs aflame. "I was hurt by all of the empty promises that you had made to me over the years and I'd finally had enough. I didn't actually think that you'd abandon us like that. I couldn't have cared less if you never spoke to me again, but you broke my mother's heart."

She'd never be able to forgive him for that. Blanca's health had taken a turn after that, and though she had done her best to tell her daughter that she was going to be alright and just needed a little time to herself, she was ultimately keeping from her the real reason that she was beginning to lose strength in her body. Mickey hadn't known about the cancer that had developed in her lungs. A woman who had never smoked a day in her life had fallen ill with a disease because she had picked up a second job in addition to her nursing responsibilities to ensure that her daughter was taken care of. The job at the bars had subjected her to unclean and unsafe working conditions, but none had proven to be as deadly as the second hand smoke she inhaled for years. It hadn't taken too long before she was barely able to move around the house before she was short of breath and forced to give up her job at the hospital altogether.

And with all those years of pent up anger and heartache already wearing at her, Mickey had done the only thing she could think of doing. She used her aggression to train her body and channeled it toward more constructive outlets so that her mother did not have to bear the brunt of her distain. So when things had gotten really tight for the two of them, it hadn't taken much for Mickey to remember the more painful parts of her past and use them to her advantage.

Barney sighed. "If I had known that she was sick-"

"But you didn't," she said quickly, cutting him off once more as her body slowly began to give in and slide against the wall back to the floor. "And now she's gone. So it hardly matters anymore."

Her arms folded themselves over her chest as a sort of protective shield as she turned her head away from him and squeezed her eyes shut against the pain that threatened to invade her heart once more. She thought that she had been able to put all of this behind her. But the past had a way of creeping up when you least expected it, and she knew now that her mother had been right all along, loath as she was to admit it. One day, she had been told, she would need to face her father again.

It was the soft touch to her cheek that caused a gasp to fall from her lips in shock, her body jumping at the sudden contact that had formed between the two. Somehow, without her notice, Barney had shifted himself against the wall until he sat a little closer and could reach out to touch his daughter's cheek with the same gentle touch that had once been so familiar to her. Dark eyes looked over at him with uncertainty as she waited. For what, she didn't really know, but waiting seemed like the best option.

"I can't fix the past," he told her as he brushed his thumb lightly over the apple of her cheek. "But I promise…I'm going to get you out of here…even if it's the last thing I do."

Mikayla closed her eyes and shook her head. "Barney you can't promise-"

"I can, and I do," he argued firmly. "I won't let him hurt you, Mickey. Not while I'm still here."

All at once, it was like something inside of her had snapped. For the first time in a very long time the young woman found herself fighting back tears and quickly pushed herself toward her father, slipping her arms around his chest to help pull her body closer. Her cheek was pressed into his abdomen when he returned the gesture and carefully wrapped his own arms protectively around her, holding her as tightly as his body would allow. From there, she could not only feel the beating of his heart, but she could hear it too. And though she was now far older than she had once been, the feeling was oddly comforting to her. As she had in her youth, her fear of losing her father was temporarily laid to rest with the slow rise and fall of his chest and the steady beating of his heart.

"You know, I always wanted something better for you," he muttered down to her. "But in the end it didn't matter. You ended up being just like me anyway."

Despite herself, Mickey smiled. "Is that such a bad thing?"

A chuckle rumbled through Barney's chest. "I don't know yet, kid. I really don't know."

The two of them sat together like that for quite some time before Mikayla finally pulled herself away and managed to convince Barney that he needed to try and rest. The lack of furniture in their holding room would mean that he was likely to spend a rather uncomfortable night on the floor, for which his body wouldn't thank him when the morning came. But after assuring him that she worked better at night, he finally laid himself down and drifted off into an uneasy slumber, leaving Mickey alone with her thoughts. Though the bond between them seemed to be closer than it had previously been she knew that she would need to figure out a plan of action quickly if she was to spare either of them any further pain at the hands of their captor. He would have done as Church demanded and come alone, which meant that she could not necessarily count on the rest of the team to aid them…though she didn't doubt that Doc, Christmas and Gunnar were probably trying to find them even now.

He woke with a start quite a few times as he drifted in and out of consciousness, and each time the young woman was quick to reassure him that she was alright. That seemed to be his only concern when his eyes flew open, and so she placed herself where she knew he would see her the next time. There was no point in letting him worry, though he seemed to be much better off if she had a hand on his arm or his shoulder. Almost as if he could still sense the continual contact and that alone was enough to put him at ease.

As the evening hours slowly began to give way into the daylight, Mikayla's mind was still anxiously turning. She was running out of time before Church and his men would return for Barney to do further harm to him, and she didn't doubt that they would soon be coming. If the grudge that he held was a deep as she had been lead to believe then Barney's life was in far greater danger than her own. And without the team to back them up, Mickey was the only person who potentially stood between Barney and certain death.

She had only just begun to find her father again. She wasn't going to lose him now.